Setting: Just after the AC-195 war. Possibly AU, but it’s worked in so it doesn’t warp the TV storyline.

Pairings: 3x4, 1+2, Kreigan+5, 13x6

Rating: R

Warnings: Violence, possible OOC? lemon, angst. No NCS - you’ll see why I had to point that out. Several OCs but they don’t necessarily play a big part.

Disclaimers: The only characters here that I own are any alter egos, Kazimiriel, Machiavel, Sarrow and Malvad and a few other characters that’ll pop up. Characters I don’t own include: Heero, Duo, Trowa, Quatre, Wufei, Zechs, Treize and any other good ones in fact.

Also, I would like to note that I am not Christian - anybody that wants to know why can pick one of two courses of action, either accept the fact that I’m a Mahayanist or email me and prepare for a very complex credo - and I’d like to add that this is just a story. If anything in it offends anyone, I apologize very sincerely.

Rough Peace - Part 15

After a few minutes, the three remaining Gundam pilots were lead into a small room that was so white that the walls, floor and ceiling all blended into each other.

“Just stay perfectly still and this shouldn’t hurt,” the angel said harshly. “I’ll warn you though, several weeks have passed on Earth since you came here. You may well find that you have some explaining to do to your friends. But you’re not to mention anything of these events to them, is that understood?”

Duo bit his tongue and stopped himself from bashing the angel’s brains in. The way he was talking to them left a lot to be desired, he spoke almost as if they were something nasty of the bottom of his shoe.

“And Trowa, since Renfredriel’s task has been completed, he won’t be returning to Earth.”

Duo and Heero instantly turned to see the look on the Heavyarms pilot’s face. He nodded slowly as he stared at the floor, his eyes glassy and completely devoid of life.

“Is everybody set to leave?” the angel asked. Big mistake.

“No I’m not!” Duo yelled at the top of his voice, sick to death of being treated like the scum of the universe. “I know Quatre, okay? He wouldn’t want us to leave like this, I want to go and see him!”

The Deathscythe pilot stepped forward, despite Trowa’s protest only to have his exit blocked by the angel.

After a little pushing and shoving between the two of them the angel sighed and brought his hand up to Duo’s neck, “I didn’t want to have to resort to this,” he remarked, curling his finger’s tightly around the braided boy’s throat and piercing the skin with his nails.

Duo let out a wordless scream of sheer agony as he felt his flesh slit through. Blood coursed down his neck as he slowly felt himself lose control of his body, going limp as Heero stepped forward to catch him, stunned by how far this seraph would go to uphold his duty.

He was about to stand up to give the angel a taste of his own medicine but it disappeared. The room went black, patches appeared in places where the atmosphere began to dissolve and burn away. Suddenly the air was transformed into an intense vacuum, ripping an uncharacteristic shriek from Heero and Trowa.

Heero tightened his grip on a near comatose Duo as his audible range was replaced with a high-pitched ringing sound and all three of them were thrown backwards into an abyss.

Quatre’s eyes flickered open, gradually refocusing as he awoke. He cast his eyes about and found he was lying on a simple futon only about six inches from the ground, he rolled sleepily over onto his side and looked up to a familiar set of white robes and brown sandals.

The man bent down beside him and smiled. “How are you, my child?” he asked kindly, sensing the boy’s confusion.

Quatre smiled back as he tousled his hair gently, “Okay…” he croaked. “Thank you sir. Where are my friends? Are they here?”

“Your friends are fine,” the man replied. “They’ve been taken back to Earth again. They can live there and you’ll be able to get on with your life.”

The Sandrock pilot sat bolt upright at the messiah’s words, “What!?” he exclaimed. “But… but Trowa. I have to see him! I can’t let him leave me like this!”

“Calm down,” the man said. “You’ll see him again eventual-”

“You don’t understand!” Quatre cried, getting to his feet and then sitting straight back down again, his balance upset by the loss of his left wing. “I… I can’t live without him… please, I… let me go to Earth. Please let me explain to him,” he begged, kneeling on the floor in reverence.

The man sighed and sat beside the small angel. “You know that you can only do that if you have a human side. Since you completed your task, your mortal side has perished. Unless you’re saying that Trowa means enough for you to-”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Quatre interrupted. “I’m sorry, messiah. I know you’d hoped that I’d be another Gabriel… but my heart lies elsewhere. I hope you can understand.”

The man kindly put his arms around the angel and smiled. “I can understand more then you’ll ever know, little one. I’m very proud of you. You’re a credit to our race.”

Quatre blushed and bit his lip. “Thank you. I should go now. Nobody stayed behind, did they?”

“Just the one, the Altron pilot. None of the others had a guardian. I think you ought to go and see him first, and your demon - somebody else I’m surprised at. Surprised but pleased. You’re very lucky to have an antagonist like him.”

“I know, just one question, sir.” Quatre paused awkwardly. “Is Wufei actually one of my celestials?”

The messiah nodded. “Wufei was there to throw you off. A true angel like you would have been able to figure it out.”

Quatre shook his head adamantly. “But the message said-”

“The message said peace*keepers* not peace*lovers*. I knew that remark would confuse you. But you knew. Deep down, you knew.”he added kindly. “And don’t worry about your father. He cares for you more than you know… and more than he thinks, for that matter.”

The angel’s eyes widened. “My father? But he… how did you? …oh right…” he mumbled, remembering that the man had all the knowledge in the universe. He balanced himself on his feet again and made his way across the palace, which was now completely deserted, and sighed as he remembered what was left of his close family.

‘I could’ve told them about my father,’ he thought sadly. ‘They just couldn’t have possibly believed me if I’d told them that my father was the same man who had his soldiers trying to kill us all for two years. I suppose I’ll have time to break it to them…’

After falling through an invisible gap in the atmosphere for possibly more than half an hour, Heero, Duo and Trowa landed with a thud on the yard outside the safe house.

Heero crawled out of the bush he’d landed upside down in and shakily got to his feet, casting his eyes over to his right and helping Trowa up out of a nearby set of flowering shrubs.

“Heero…” Duo’s hoarse voice came from the other side of the yard. The Japanese boy sat beside Duo’s figure sprawled on his back across the grass and put his arm around his back, pulling him into a sitting position. The braided boy’s head fell forward limply onto his chest.

“Duo, look at me,” Heero said desperately as his lover seemed to ignore him.

“I can’t move,” Duo replied hazily. “It’s hard to breath… kinda like the signals just aren’t getting from my brain to my limbs.”

‘This must be what the angel did to him,’ Heero wondered to himself. He gently lifted the boy’s head up to look at his eyes, “You’ll be okay, Duo. We’ll fix this.”

The violet-eyed boy struggled to smile, “Hey, where’s Trowa?”

Heero looked around, catching a glimpse of the gymnast’s retreating back around the side of the house. “He probably just needs some time alone,” he said quietly. “After being told he’s not going to see Quatre again for the rest of his life, I can imagine he wants to think things through.”

“Yeah,” Duo sighed, his breathing coming in heavy, labored gasps. “Heero, d’ya think you could take me inside. I feel a little conspicuous out here like this.”

The Wing pilot got up and lifted his lover from the floor, holding him tightly to his chest as he opened the door… the *unlocked* door.

Heero frowned, wondering who on Earth could be inside. After all the nasty surprises they’d had over the past few days, he wasn’t expecting it to be anybody good. He sat Duo down on the doorstep and told him to wait there, drawing the emergency revolver he always kept in his pocket - that’s right, he’d taken a gun into the afterlife.

‘I don’t understand this,’ he mused worriedly, ‘the key is in the house, there’s no sign of anyone breaking in and the only spare copy is held by the Preventers in a safe in the supply room.’

Heero froze as a floorboard creaked and he heard a voice coming from the living room. He pressed his ear to door and stayed outside whilst he caught the gist of the conversation.

“No, Noin. There’s still no sign of them.” It was Zechs.

From the way the conversation was so disjointed and the sense of Zechs being alone in the room, Heero concluded he was on the phone. Probably his cell phone as he could hear footsteps.

“I know, I know. This is the end of week two. I can’t imagine Une sending them on a mission without letting someone else know… yes she probably would have told me, but I can assure you, that is *not* the reason!”

Heero was close to sniggering as he realized what Noin must have implied. He waited until the conversation finished. ‘I wonder how I can do this so that I don’t completely freak him out and get a gun turned on me. I’ll just warn him before I jump out in front of him.’

“Zechs, it’s Heero,” he said through the door before opening it slowly.

‘Preventer Wind’ smiled and put his cell phone back in his pocket.

Heero sighed with relief. “Would you carry Duo in while I grab a blanket from the closet upstairs?” he said, hurrying back to the front door and briefly whispering a few words of clarification in Duo’s ear before Zechs picked him up off the floor as Heero ran upstairs.

Once Duo was curled up at one end of the sofa, Zechs sat down on a chair across from the lovers. “What are we going to say to the rest of the Preventers when you get back to the office?” he asked

Heero took a deep breath and began a long string of lies that he knew Duo would strongly object to ‘I’ll make it up to him somehow’

“How about something like… the last mission Wufei and I were on gave us some other hints about a possible Gundanium salvage ring,” Heero began, wondering just how much Zechs would go along with. “We knew that the Preventers wouldn’t endorse a raid like that without some more solid evidence, so we went ourselves.”

Zechs nodded “So where are Winner and Chang?” he asked lightheartedly.

Heero felt his pulse quicken as he realized just how intensely he was going to have to lie. “Well… Quatre’s missing,” he said bluntly. “We think… he might have been captured by the counter operatives. There’s a possibility that he’s still alive but I wouldn’t hold out much hope - that will cover the very slim chance that he might show up again. And, I guess there’s no need to lie here, Wufei’s dead.”

Zechs nodded. “What happened to the body?”

The Wing pilot hesitated, unable to think of a plausible excuse, until Duo piped up sleepily from beside him. “Wufei was killed when a car engine exploded. The size of the blast completely incinerated his body.”

Heero smiled and kissed Duo on the cheek. “Thanks, Duo. I know you hate having to lie like this.”

“Yeah… we’d better tell Trowa about this,” Duo said drowsily. “Zechs… how did you find time to get into the office?”

Zechs smiled, “I didn’t. After you’d been missing for a few days, I made the excuse that I was going to look for you all and then left for Vardynne. I left messages intermittently with my pager. I know you’re in no state to do anything right now, but Yuy and Barton really ought to come into the office tomorrow.”

“Actually…” Heero sighed. “Would it bother you if Trowa took the day off? He’s just been separated from Quatre for God knows how long, I think he needs some time for it to sink in.”

Zechs gave a curt nod. “That’s fine. So long as you can come and ‘explain’ to Une and the rest of the Preventers.”

TBC…

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